Community Arts & Traditional Arts

Maine Arts Commission Begins New Program
to Celebrate Traditional Arts

	Birchbark basket, David Moses Bridges, Perry, ME

This fall, the Maine Arts Commission begins celebrating traditional artists in a big way. For the first time, the agency is awarding a Traditional Arts Fellowship of $13,000 to an outstanding traditional artist in Maine.

Traditional arts are defined as skills and aesthetic knowledge passed down in an informal fashion, through day-to-day living. They emanate from the community and its experience. Community and traditional arts associate, Keith Ludden says, “Maine is home to some of the nation’s best traditional performers, artists and craftspeople. We wanted to showcase and honor traditional artists who have spent their lives developing their art and preserving cultural traditions so that they can be passed down to future generations.”

	Traditional Arts Fellowship Logo

This year’s award is going to Passamaquoddy birchbark canoemaker, David Moses Bridges. Bridge’s family has been steeped in traditional native arts for generations. His maternal grandmother, Beatrice Soctomah, was a highly regarded brown ash and sweet grass basketmaker. It was from his great grandfather, Sylvester Gabriel, that Bridges first learned a love of canoemaking:

"He was the last of the old-time makers here in Maine, and he lived with us when I was younger. This was back in the days before day care, so while my mom and dad worked, he was always there…and we just talked an awful lot about all kinds of things. He knew all the old stories and legends, and he mentioned just in passing one time that he used to make birchbark canoes, and at the time I was reading Stuart Little, and he has a little birchbark canoe in the story. I was probably six or seven years old, and we just decided right then and there that we would make a canoe some day."

	Birch basket by David Moses Bridges.

Unfortunately, David and his great-grandfather never got to make that canoe. Gabriel died when Bridges was 10, leaving Bridges with a legacy. “He left me all his old tools — his crooked knife, barking knife, drawknife, awl and his axes, and those \are the primary canoemaking tools, right there. You need this bare bone set of tools and a good eye.” Gabriel left a legacy not only for Bridges, but for the larger community as well:

"In the community up at Pleasant Point, I still speak with a lot of people—some of the elder men who used to go out birchbark hunting with him, as well as my own folks. They always have great stories about how he worked, how he would bring his patterns into the woods with him and cut the bark out around the campfire that night so he wouldn’t have to carry the excess out. As I hear these stories it reflects the way in which I work now. It is almost like it has come full circle."

After studying marine drafting at the Marine Trades Center in Eastport, Bridges also learned much of his craft from canoemaker Steve Cayard, a self-taught birch bark canoe maker. He apprenticed

	David Moses Bridges paddles a birchbark canoe in the Passamaquoddy Bay.

Steve Cayard, a self-taught birch bark canoe maker. He apprenticed to Cayard in 1999 and 2000, and assisted Cayard at the Wooden Boat School in Brooklin. Working together they documented and restored many historic canoes. “He is a well of knowledge, and I think it is a beautiful gesture for him to share this with native people,” says Bridges.

Bridges says the award will help him expand the range of styles he works in. He intends to visit museums and study some of the older styles and techniques for making birchbark canoes and baskets. Most of all, he is mindful of how close the art came to being gone forever. Sylvester Gabriel built his last canoe in 1920, for the tricentennial of Plymouth Plantation and Bridges wants to make sure it never comes that close to dying out again.

One Traditional Arts Fellowship will be awarded annually by the Maine Arts Commission, with the next deadline for applications on June 29, 2007. Artists interested in the Traditional Arts Fellowship may contact contact Keith Ludden, 207/287-2713, keith.ludden@maine.gov or TTY/NexTalk 877/887-3878 User ID: keith.ludden.

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	Birchbark canoe, David Moses Bridges, Perry, ME.